Annie Marek: A Festival of Nations

Last week we had an all campus celebration of all of countries (over 40!): The Intercultural Event. It was such a great time we’re still talking about it. There was great food, great drinks, awesome singing and dancing by our classmates! The only unfortunate thing about it was there was so much food I didn’t get to try it all! Hopefully the night happens again and I make it over to the tables I missed this time. :)

I’m sure your wondering what the USA brought to the party. Well after much discussion we decided on s’mores. S’mores are something known to the whole US AND is not from another country. Really what else could we have done? I know my friends in MN are thinking “Why not a hotdish?”, well I don't think that would represent my friends from Texas, Colorado, or NY. And of course there’s other dishes, but each of those (like we US citizens ourselves) comes from someplace else…hamburger, hotdog, chips, etc. So s’mores it was. Did you know that not many people outside of the US knows what a s’more is? We weren’t able to find a suitable fire, so we had to use a microwave but it worked and they were a hit! My favorite comment of the night was, “Leave it to the USA to invent something like this”. Note to all s'more lovers - they are 110% better with Belgian chocolate!

me with the s'more and James demonstrating how big you have to open your mouth to eat them

I also cooked with a couple of my classmates from Slovakia. I have such a strong Czech ancestry (75%) I guess we could be cousins! So we held a family reunion of the former Czechoslovakia and cooked koblihy (or shishky in Slovakia). We made over 130 and cooked for 7 hours! It was a lot of effort but mostly tons and tons of fun. And as for our results – well the koblihy didn’t turn out as good as grandma’s but for our 1st attempt they were pretty good (besides grandma’s been making them for decades). I was also sharing with the guys that I grew up in Veseli, near a town called New Prague - which has Dozinky days. I also shared with them the Czech phrases I know: “How are you”, “Give me a kiss” and “Lick my butt.”. Can you tell which ones I learned from my grandma and which one from crazy uncles?